A scam is a scheme in which someone tries to dishonestly obtain assets owned by another party. One general classification of scam is misrepresentation, where a person falsely claims to have certain skills, experience, or certifications, and uses these claims to extract money from others. For example, someone could misrepresent himself as a contractor following a major storm, and takes advance funds from a homeowner to conduct repairs that are never performed.

Many other scams appear on the Internet on a daily basis. Among the more famous are requests to assist with the transfer of large amounts of cash from other countries, as well as e-mail spoofing to obtain password information for a person's bank accounts. Yet another scam is the pyramid scheme, which builds up layers of participants, with each layer paying the group who recruited them, and so on. The scheme eventually collapses, leaving the newest participants with no money.